


Keep the Lights On

by CatLovePower



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trench (Album), Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Inspired by Fanfiction, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Nosebleed, Snakes, Spiders, Supernatural Elements, TOPFL Halloween Challenge, TOPFL Halloween Challenge 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-12-27 20:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21124625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: "They’re used to catastrophic failure anyway. It goes with the job, or maybe they’re just bad at catching cryptids."-Tyler and Josh work for Trench, an organisation which locates and rescues strange creatures. Their last job went awry, and they have to lay low for a while. But Mark has another mission for them...





	Keep the Lights On

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Where Are You?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17552927) by [tjstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjstar/pseuds/tjstar). 

  
Tyler is brushing his teeth in the crappy motel bathroom when his nose starts bleeding one morning. It’s so violent and sudden that he is thankful he’s already standing above the sink. He drops his toothbrush and tries to stench the flow with his hand, but it’s no use. So much blood. It makes rivulets on his lips and runs down his chin, where it drips alarmingly quick.  
  
He grips the edge of the sink with his free arm and tries to call for help. Josh is still asleep, but the walls are thin and he didn’t lock the door. Tyler doesn’t even hear if he’s coming because his head feels empty and blood is rushing in his ears. His knees buckle and he falls, clipping his chin on the sink. He bites his tongue, hard, and everything becomes dull and gray for a moment.  
  
He nearly scares Josh to death when he finally comes to see what the commotion is about and finds Tyler covered in blood and half conscious on the tiled floor. With some ice and constant pressure, the bleeding is finally under control, but they didn’t need that kind of excitement that early in the morning.  
  
They’re still sort of persons of interest for the local authorities, who asked them not to leave the country anytime soon – despite Mark messing with police records, higher ups didn’t forget about them. They can’t realistically go to the hospital, so Josh tries not to panic too much, and Tyler not to bitch and moan. But really, he can’t right now. His tongue hurts too much, swollen in his mouth like it’s not his anymore.  
  
“It must have something to do with the bishops,” Josh says later at breakfast.  
  
There is no way Tyler is eating right now, he still feels woozy and lightheaded. Red Bull stings, but he still sips on it from a mug. He grunts what sounds like a question and looks at Josh.  
  
“Or rather what Ned did, after you…”  
  
He can’t finish his sentence, and Tyler can’t blame him. Not everyone can claim to have been killed by a cult leader and resuscitated by an alien in the same evening.  
  
Tyler makes a face and flaps his shirt, because it’s already so damn hot. Silly weather.  
  
“And you think it’s stress and heat exhaustion, I get it,” Josh concludes in his place, but he looks absolutely unconvinced.  
  
Tyler sips some more energy drink, even if he really shouldn’t. Being on the run is not good on his nerves, and he feels like a rubber band ready to snap. He bites his nails until they bleed, and Josh keeps putting band aids on his fingers to prevent further damage.  
  
He can’t wait to leave that damn island and go back to civilized land – even if it means taking a dodgy looking plane in the middle of the night on a decommissioned airfield. Australia has lost its appeal, and no bishops have been spotted recently; Tyler knows he should be happy about it, but he wants a rematch. Them trying to killing him last time – and succeeding – doesn’t sit well with him.  
  
Tyler’s only regret is not being able to catch the little alien-looking thing he called Ned, who was their initial target. Mark is already beyond pissed because of their brush with the law. It would have been better to be able to bring back the weird creature as a peace offering. Plus he looked lost and scared, and he would have been safer back in Trench.  
  
“Earth to Tyler,” Josh says, startling him.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Think you might be ready for a case?”  
  
Tyler quickly raises his head and looks at Josh as if he had grew a second head. Mark sending them on a new mission after the debacle of the last one? Impossible.  
  
“Don’t get your hopes up, it sounds like a loonie who went off his meds.” Josh shakes his head.  
  
“Plane?” Tyler mouths. His tongue has stopped bleeding but he doesn’t feel like talking just yet.  
  
“We still have a few days to wait. Laying low, Mark said.”  
  
Josh is looking at his phone with a perplexed expression. He shows Tyler the screen; Mark sent an address, and a bunch of spider emojis. It sounds ominous, and possibly exciting. Tyler just hopes he doesn’t randomly bleed to death before their getaway plane is ready.

||-//

Two days ago, they were in the holding cell of a governmental agency. Just before that, they had been roughly handcuffed and thrown in an unmarked black van, while helicopters circled overhead. And a few moments before, Tyler was lying at the bottom of an empty pool with a broken neck, while Josh stood over him with a broken heart. But they don’t talk about that.  
  
It turns out that alibis, when they are airtight – “but we weren’t even in the country at the time, officer!” – and threats about calling the media about a wrongful arrest can be embarrassing enough to make some people panic and decide to let them out on bail. They skipped town the first chance they got, stole a van and drove west.  
  
So now they are stuck in a crappy van, and Josh is doing most of the driving, because Tyler claims driving on the left confuses him, and Josh doesn’t feel like pushing him since his near-death experience. All he got from that fateful night is some first degree burns on his arms, already healing, and a bunch of nightmares; Tyler is stuck with headaches and nosebleeds.  
  
Mark assured them they wouldn’t get flagged for the time being – for the car theft and for skipping bail. But he has been wrong more than once in the past, so Josh is not taking any risks, and he drives like a grandpa who lost his glasses.  
  
Air conditioning gives up on the way to the very small, nearly not on the map town that Tyler already loathes. He hates a lot of things these days, it must be the lack of sleep and the feeling that they might get arrested at any moment. Being strip searched and thrown in a cell is not an experience he wants to reiterate anytime soon.  
  
He looks at Josh and the way the sun plays in his hair for a while. He must have smiled, because Josh glances at him and asks, “What?”  
  
“Nothing,” Tyler says. “I was just thinking about you,” he pauses, for effect, “naked.”  
  
Josh blushes and does his best to drive in a straight line. Thankfully there is not a lot he could crash into. They’re in the bush now. Night is falling fast, and they pull over at a side road cafe, just before the town where their mysterious subject lives. They might be on the run from the law but even criminals got to eat. And it helps when you have a shady, illegal organization backing you up and sending you money until you can get out of the country.  
  
Or maybe they don’t want them to leave Australia, and all that is punishment for failing their alien retrieval mission. Tyler thinks he can add paranoia to the list of his symptoms, but he doesn’t tell Josh anything. Sometimes his mind is weird, and he doesn’t like talking about it.  
  
The restaurant is nicer than they would expect, and Tyler enthusiastically digs in, even if his tongue still hurts and he has a bruise on his chin and a splitting headache. But the perspective of some mysterious cryptid to discover and maybe bring back is exciting enough for him to gain an appetite. They really shouldn’t be discussing it in here, but they do, because it’s way too hot and stuffy in the van.  
  
“So according to Mark, this guy claims he is being possessed, or that his house is haunted, possibly both. He also said there were spiders under his skin? It wasn’t clear.”  
  
“We’re not exorcists though,” Tyler points out. As much as he would love to, Trench mission is about gathering and protecting strange creatures, not investigating any unexplained phenomena.  
  
“But the spiders could be real, and special,” Josh argues.  
  
“Do you really want to bring spiders on that plane back home?”  
  
“We just need a tightly closed box, and…”  
  
“Coffee?” the waitress interrupts.  
  
She pours it without waiting for an answer, and Tyler makes a face. Dirty water, even the smell displeases him. Josh smiles and asks for the check, but the young woman stays rooted in place next to their table. She looks at the kitchen, then at the room – nearly empty because it’s still early – and then leans over and whispers, “It’s real you know.”  
  
“What is?” Tyler asks, his voice low as well.  
  
“The spiders. The ghosts. There’s a devil out there.”  
  
She grips the coffee pot a bit harder and grits her teeth. She looks like she has seen something and nobody would believe her.  
  
“There’s ghosts too?” Tyler exclaims, a bit too loudly, and a customer at the counter throws them a weird look.  
  
Tyler thinks he looks shady, drinking only coffee, all dressed in black despite the heat. And is that an earpiece he can see in his ear? Was he talking to himself earlier? Tyler feels like running away for a second, which is stupid if that dude really is a cop in plain clothes.  
  
Instead, he locks eyes with Josh and lets him take the lead. Josh is a very anxious person who, strangely enough, rarely panics. He must be running a thousand scenarios in his head at all times, Tyler thinks, always ready to choose the best course of action.  
  
“We’re here to investigate, don’t worry,” Josh says, wincing when Tyler hits him in the shin while glancing sideways, at the man in the suit.  
  
“Honestly, I’m just glad they sent someone,” the oversharing waitress concludes, not reading the room.  
  
Josh builds a nice little story that seems to say a lot, but really says nothing at all, about who they’re working for and what they’re going to do. He can be charming when he wants, but Tyler is distracted, and he feels the man in black watching them. He’s sweating like crazy, holding his breath while Josh pays (a bunch of crumpled notes, they don’t want to leave a trail), until they can get away.  
  
“Why did you hit me? I had it under control. She even gave us some info about the man,” Josh whines, on their way back to the car.  
  
“You didn’t see the man at the bar?”  
  
“What man?” Josh asks, more annoyed than he usually is. The heat must be getting to him too.  
  
“He was weird. Probably a cop or a special agent,” Tyler mumbles. He looks through the restaurant windows, but he can’t see anyone at the counter. “He must have gone out the back.”  
  
Tyler insists that they wait in the stuffy van, letting the sun set below the horizon. But the suspicious man never reappears.  
  
“You’re being irrational,” Josh says, because he wants to get it over with and move already, but Tyler won’t let him start the ignition.  
  
“I’m going crazy, you mean?” Tyler spits. “I know what I saw.” He looks like he wants to start an argument, and Josh is too tired for that.   
  
“I think you need sleep,” Josh corrects.  
  
He’s doing his best to sound placating, but he looks like he just wants to take Tyler by the shoulders and shake him until he tells him what’s really wrong. Tyler spends the rest of the way with his arms crossed and an angry expression on his face, while checking the rear-view mirror from time to time.

||-//

Later, when they are parked in the driveway of a man named Clancy, they receive a text from Mark telling them to be discreet, and a screenshot from Twitter. Apparently the waitress took it upon herself to share the news that help had finally arrived and that’s the mystery was going to be solved. It’s both creepy that Mark is watching them that closely, and scary to think he might not be the only one.  
  
They have a cover story, and ugly jumpsuits that are way too hot and scratchy for the weather. But if there really are spiders going about, Tyler prefers not to be wearing shorts. His leg hair has grown back, and it feels itchy all the time. It doesn’t take a lot to imagine little spiders legs crawling all over his calves. Maybe Josh is right, maybe he does need sleep. He runs a hand on his face and brushes his hair back. It’s getting too long again.  
  
“Are you up for this? We could come back tomorrow,” Josh asks, but he sounds unsure.  
  
“Nah, I’m good,” Tyler assures.  
  
He gets out of the van and doesn’t even flinch when the door slams behind him. His head is pounding a little less than this afternoon. There is an annoying sound in his ears and he hopes it’s not another nose bleed coming. He would hate to bleed all over that dude’s floor, he sounded like he had enough problems to begin with.  
  
“Let’s do this,” Tyler repeats, more for himself than anything else. He squares his shoulders and his neck cracks. He winces but doesn’t say anything.  
  
Clancy is a nice middle-aged man who immediately invites them inside his one-story house. He doesn’t seem to find it weird for animal control to show up at 8 pm with no credentials and an unmarked van. Instead, he keeps thanking them for coming, while he fusses in the kitchen. Josh sits on the threadbare couch, and Tyler stands awkwardly, looking at the odd decoration in the dark living room. The furniture is old, sometimes patched up with heavy duty tape; the lights keep blinking, as if the electricity is faulty, and the old wallpaper is peeling off near the ceiling.  
  
Their host comes back with a smile that looks fake, and a tray with cups and a pot of steaming coffee. Tyler makes a face and sits on the armrest of the couch at Josh’s silent insistence. There is something very wrong with this place, and he can’t quite put his finger on it, but the less he’s touching, the better.  
  
Clancy launches into a confused tale that reeks of latent paranoia, and they both wonder why Mark sent them here. The smile was indeed fake, because the list of that man’s problems is apparently endless. It ranges from leaky pipes that make weird noises at night to random people trampling his lawn, with the occasional “they are watching” thrown in the mix for good measure. Josh and Tyler exchange a look, and Tyler can nearly hear his partner think, “He sounds just like you.”  
  
They listen, a little bit puzzled; Josh tries to look understanding and sympathetic, while Tyler just gives up and wanders across the room. He knows he has a resting bitch face and he can look like an uncaring jerk so why try and pretend otherwise.  
  
“We were told you had a bug problem,” Josh suggests, trying to bring Clancy back on track.  
  
“Spiders are not bugs,” Tyler unhelpfully offers from where he stands, looking at a crooked frame that has been taped back to the wall. The man sure has a weird sense of interior design.  
  
Despite not being ghost hunters or anything of the sort, they do have EMF counters, little devices used to read electromagnetic fields; some creatures can modify them, others use them to hear their way around. It sometimes comes up handy, and it always impresses laymen.  
  
So Tyler takes his out of his jumpsuit front pocket and turns it on. The thing goes bonkers, all blinking lights and shaky needles, and Tyler is glad it is silent because there would be no stopping Clancy from having a meltdown if he saw it. The walls set it off, as well as the ceiling. Josh is eyeing him suspiciously above Clancy’s shoulder, as he stands on a chair to reach the overhead lighting fixture.   
  
“And sometimes I get that weird feeling that I’m ceasing to exist,” Clancy concludes, wringing his hands and looking at his feet. “That’s why I keep all the lights on in this place, otherwise the spiders will crawl inside.”  
  
Tyler makes a face, still looking at the EMF. Then one of the light bulbs pops and goes dark when he approaches the device. Tyler frowns and quickly gets down. He’s not sure it’s a job for Trench, but there is something suspicious going on here, and Josh seems to agree.  
  
“We’ll stay over night,” Josh explains. “Just do what you normally do, and alerts us if anything weird happens in your room.”  
  
Even with Josh reassuring voice, the offer sounds phony and strange, but Clancy is too far gone to notice. Or maybe he’s that scared to be alone in the house at night. All Tyler can think about is that there is only one couch, and that it looks lumpy as hell. He would take seedy motel rooms over this assignment.  
  
They set up the two GoPro cameras they bought on the way here. The rest of their equipment is still at their first hotel, back when they were tracking Ned around swimming pools. Or maybe the police seized it. They’re used to catastrophic failure and having to replace everything in a pinch anyway. It goes with the job, or maybe they’re just bad at catching cryptids.  
  
Tyler lets Josh takes the first turn sleeping, while he explores the rest of the house with a flashlight and the EMF meter. It’s not that big, and the whole place seems to set the device off. It’s lighter when he’s lower, so there must be something on the roof or in the attic, if that place even has one.  
  
He goes around the house to the small back yard where the grass is yellow and dry. Even the bushy trees look dead. Either Clancy doesn’t have a green thumb, or something is killing his lawn. The back gate is unlocked and makes a small clanking sound with the wind. Tyler perks up and that’s when he sees it; a dark silhouette, standing in the middle of the road behind the house. They observe each other for a second, and when Tyler blinks, it’s gone. The wind feels colder than it should be, and he shudders in the night.  
  
When he comes back in, Josh is awake and he looks pissed, which makes no sense because he still has an hour or so before they were supposed to switch.  
  
“Where were you?” Josh asks, and he sounds accusatory for no good reason.  
  
“Literally two feet away, outside in the yard, don’t worry,” Tyler says with a frown.  
  
The needle of the meter is stuck on MAX and the device makes a little whirring sound in his hand. The flashlight is dead and won’t turn back on. He jumps when Josh puts a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“What?” Tyler barks.  
  
“Your nose…” Josh says, his voice tight.  
  
Tyler puts the electronics down and raises a hand to his face, and sure enough it’s covered in blood. He lowers his head and pinches his nose, but it has already dripped all over his jumpsuit. Too bad he’s not wearing the red one.  
  
He lets Josh lead him to the couch, even though he doesn’t feel lightheaded this time. He hasn’t even noticed he was bleeding; and that in itself is worrying. Josh fusses and Tyler lets him. Because it’s nice to be reminded how much he cares, and also because he doesn’t feel like arguing anymore.   
  
Instead he accepts the somewhat clean towel Josh hands him, then a glass of water. He drinks half and puts it down next to the instruments on the coffee table. All the diodes of the EMF are blinking like it’s Christmas, the needle twitches once more, and then it goes black, like the lights before it.  
  
“You saw that, right?” he asks Josh, somewhat nasally. He doesn’t dare taking the towel away from his face just yet.  
  
“That was weird,” Josh agrees.  
  
“Could it feed off energy?” Tyler suggests, thinking out loud.  
  
“Any ideas what it might be?”  
  
“Not sure yet.”  
  
Tyler is about to mention the man he saw outside, when a piercing yell cuts him short. As the commotion quickly turns to muffled screams and thrashing, Josh and Tyler are sprinting to Clancy’s bedroom without a second thought.  
  
In the half light coming from the corridor, the room is as sad as the rest of the house, with old wood paneling on the walls, dirty window panes and very ugly curtains. But that’s not what Tyler focuses on when they open the door. Clancy is lying in his bed, covered in what looks like a black, hairy, undulating cover. Tyler can’t help but recoil when he realizes that it’s not a blanket, but thousands of tiny spiders crawling all over the poor man. How he keeps yelling like that when they could get in his mouth is beyond him, and he clamps his own mouth shut in sympathy.  
  
Josh, on the other hand, doesn’t seem bothered, and he goes to shake him out of it, like it’s a banal night terror. Tyler grabs him by the arm to stop him.  
  
“What are you doing?” Josh says, as he tries to shake him loose. “We need to wake him up.”  
  
“Can’t you see them?” Tyler whispers through clenched teeth.  
  
He doesn’t let go of Josh’s arm; no way he’s letting him get close. And no way they’re bringing those things back on the plane for Mark.   
  
“Ty, what are you doing?” Josh says, in this ‘I don’t want to start a fight but so help me’ voice Tyler hates. It makes him feel stupid.  
  
He eyes the spiders on the bed and poor Clancy’s face, frozen in silent terror now.  
  
“Please don’t touch him,” he pleas.  
  
His nose is trickling again, and the whole room smells like coppery death. That seems to halt Josh, because he stops pulling and goes to turn on the lights instead. The switch won’t work, which doesn’t come as a surprise. The house is falling apart and its occupant with it. Josh fishes his own flashlight out of his pocket, and it flickers but finally turns on.  
  
The bed is empty. Clancy is sitting at the foot of the wooden frame, holding his knees, head down. The spiders have vanished, as if they were never there. Tyler suddenly feels like he can breathe more easily, but he still holds on to the door frame, just in case. He has bled all over the floor.  
  
Clancy shakily explains that nightmares of the sort have happened pretty much every night for a while now. He keeps the lights on in his room, but the bulbs keep exploding, as the whole house is getting more and more defective.  
  
“I don’t want to fall away,” he repeats, eyes fixed on the wall.  
  
And Tyler can’t help but shake his head in silent agreement. His own skin feels too tight, despite the obvious lack of spiders crawling on or under it. He scratches at his arm absentmindedly, until he can feel Josh looking at him. He stops and bites his nails instead.  
  
The cameras didn’t record anything. Just Clancy going to bed, then the light bulb going out. Blurry silhouettes move around the room at one point, but that could be shadows from passing cars. Then, they see themselves barge in, Josh with bed hair, and Tyler with a bloody towel pressed to his face. They make a strange pair of investigators.  
  
There is nothing there that could help them. All they know is that Clancy is going mad, and light slows down the process, if only a little. They set him up with a bunch of lit candles and retreat to the living room, hoping he doesn’t burn the house down during the night.  
  
Tyler is sure he won’t be able to fall asleep after all that, but the moment his head hits the musty cushion, he’s out like a light. Dreams come easily to him – and he likes to tell them in vivid detail to Josh in the morning, especially if they were sexy, just to see him blush like a teenager.  
  
And so he dreams that he gets up from the lumpy couch, but the shoddy living room, the sad little house, Clancy and his spiders are all gone. He’s not in Australia anymore, because he is freezing and his breath makes little white puffs in the crisp air. In the distance, he can see a city, dark and menacing. Behind him are mountains and forests. He was lying in the bed of what once was a huge river, and his jumpsuit is cold and wet. It’s not the one they put on to pretend they were pest control. This one is dark green, all patched up with yellow tape that feels important somehow.  
  
From above, he can hear someone call, but it’s not his name. It sounds like a battle cry in a foreign language, and he wants to answer, tell them he’s here and to wait for him, but there is no time. He can hear the hooves of a horse on the uneven terrain, he can feel it in his bones. He needs to run, but he’s rooted in place. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth.  
  
The hand that touches his face is surprisingly soft and caring, but he still takes a blind swing. His fist connects with flesh and he hears someone cry out. The hand comes back and snares his wrist, forcing him to open his eyes.  
  
Josh is looking at him; very close, and very scared. Guilt creeps in and a confused apology spills out of Tyler’s mouth. He’s still not sure what happened.  
  
“You had a nightmare, you were thrashing around, pretty much just like Clancy,” Josh explains. He pushes his legs to sit on the couch, as close as he can. “What is going on, Tyler?”  
  
“I think that Nico freak got his hooks in me,” Tyler whispers.  
  
Josh wraps an arm around his shoulders, not commenting if he can feel how shaky he is right now. Tyler puts his head on Josh’s shoulder and looks at the lights until his eyes burn. He blinks, they blink as well; it almost seems like they’re transmitting things to him, and he can feel blood tickle the back of his throat. He feels like throwing up.  
  
“So it’s not the heat after all?” Josh teases, because he loves being right.  
  
“Not funny,” Tyler says. “I think Clancy might have crossed paths with them as well.”  
  
“And now what? They can manipulate you from a distance? Are they here?” Josh tries and fails to sound calm and collected. He looks ready to fight any cult member that might pop in if needs be.  
  
“I think almost dying,” he winces at the thought, and scoots closer to Josh. “I think it opened something in my mind. Broke my brain?”  
  
“So now you’re what, a medium? Can you see dead people?” Josh jokes. He raises his hands and says, “I swear to you I’m real.”  
  
“Still not funny,” Tyler says, but he pinches Josh’s arm for good measure.  
  
He lets Josh push him back into the couch and then straddle his thighs and look at him like he’s the most beautiful person on the planet. It’s a nice feeling. He lets him kiss him, and it feels weird to know it’s being recorded. Mark is going to love this mission report – if they ever catch that damn plane.  
  
“Your mouth tastes like blood,” Josh states, and it almost ruins the moment.  
  
“My nose is a blood fountain, I was bound to swallow some of it,” he tries to defend himself, but Josh cuts him off with another kiss, deeper this time, as if to add, “and I don’t care.”

||-//

In the morning, they untangle themselves from the couch where they didn’t mean to fall asleep at the same time. Clancy keeps mumbling apologies while it should be the other way around, because they found jack squat and they didn’t look very professional while doing it.  
  
“I have a weird question for you,” Tyler starts, a bit bluntly. “What do you know about the cult called DEMA?”  
  
“Do you think it could be related?” He obviously knows something, Tyler thinks. Either he was part of it, or… “My sister ran away with them. I’ve tried to get her back for a long time, but now…”  
  
“What happened?” Josh asks.  
  
“Classic story really. She was depressed, thought they could help. Started shutting me out of her life. She sold her house and went to live with them.” Clancy looks like he told the story a lot of times already, and his voice is almost mechanical, devoid of any emotion.  
  
“But why did you stop going after her?” Tyler presses on.  
  
“I got scared,” Clancy says. He stays silent for a moment, and Tyler is about to ask another question when he continues, looking at the coffee mug in his hands. “Men dressed in black robes started following me around. They came to the house with burning torches.”  
  
Josh and Tyler exchange a look, but don’t interrupt. They get why Nico and his followers tried to stop them – they were both looking for the same strange creature at the time – but they don’t see why they would attack a man like Clancy.  
  
“I gave up,” Clancy sobs. “I gave up on her.” He buries his head in his arms and cries on the kitchen table.  
  
Josh very awkwardly pats him on the back, and they retreat to the living room. They reviewed the rest of the tapes from last night already, but there was nothing supernatural on it – apart from Josh’s out of this world ass. Tyler keeps insisting that there might be something in the attic, but they don’t have any instruments to check. They don’t even have a working flashlight anymore.  
  
In the end, Tyler wins the argument, as always. It only makes sense for him to be the one climbing up there; he is lighter than Josh, and less muscular. So Josh gives him a boost to the hatch like he weights nothing, and he even pushes his legs when he scrambles to pull himself up. The attic is dark and dusty, and he has to hold his breath in order not to sneeze or cough.  
  
“I hope there is no asbestos in there,” he half-heartedly jokes.  
  
“What?” comes Josh’s muffled question from below.  
  
“Nothing!” he screams.  
  
He flicks on a lighter, and lets the small flame cast shadows all over the cramped room. There are card boxes and broken furniture, and more than one spider web. But there are all visible and covered in dust, long abandoned by their previous hosts. If the nightmare spiders are real, they do not live up there.  
  
He doesn’t even need a working EMF to feel the atmosphere change as he ventures farther into the attic. The air is cold there, way colder than it should be, and he can feel goosebumps on his bare arms. His neck tingles and he turns around, nearly putting out the lighter. But there is no one there, only him and his fears. In the dark. With thousands of spiders hidden somewhere.  
  
“… find something?” he hears from below, but it sounds stifled and far away.  
  
He knows Josh is probably worrying – separation anxiety, Tyler once joked, but it fits – so he tries to hurry up. He nearly trips over a box and steadies himself against a dusty shelf. The flame reflects on the shiny surface of a box that looks really odd among the other old souvenirs. It shouldn’t shine, Tyler realizes. He reaches out to take it, surprised when it’s heavier than he expected. A wooden box with a nice black varnish and a small lock. The flame gets smaller and smaller, so he starts to retrace his steps, careful not to stumble.  
  
Tyler can hear Josh talk, but he can’t make out any of the words he’s saying. He hopes he’s on the phone with Mark and their totally clandestine plane is ready at last. The floor creaks ominously, and he stops moving for a second, suddenly afraid to take another step. He’s not that heavy, but the house is old. He ponders the best course of action: make a run for it, or move very slowly?  
  
In the end, the house decides for him, as wood screeches and breaks, too fast for him to get a grip on anything. His fall is short, too short for his life to flash before his eyes, but he hits the floor hard, leaving him winded and confused. There’s screaming, but he’s not sure who it’s coming from. He tries to cough, but his lungs won’t work; he tries to sit up, but his body feels leaden.  
  
“… Tyler?… hear me?”  
  
Josh is annoying. Josh never lets him sleep late and he always wants him to get up at normal hours and drink grownup drinks instead of RedBull. Josh is… upside down?  
  
Tyler blinks and tries to focus on the face above him. Josh is cradling his head and looking at him with tears in his eyes. Tyler tries to raise a hand to cup his face and wipe the tears away, but his limbs won’t cooperate.  
  
“I’m good,” he croaks, and Josh actually laughs at that.  
  
“You idiot,” Josh whispers, without letting go of his head.  
  
He’s not cuddly, Tyler realizes, he’s trying to keep his neck and spine aligned in case he broke anything – again. At that thought, a jolt of adrenaline courses through his body, and he’s able to wiggle his toes inside his sneakers.  
  
“Ow,” he groans.  
  
He tries to sit up again, despite Josh’s protests, and this time he succeeds. He rests for a while against Josh, pushing debris and broken wood with his foot, before craning his neck to look at the hole above them. That house is a deathtrap.  
  
“Are you really okay?” Josh asks.  
  
He still hasn’t let go, and he’s still holding his shoulder like he might break.  
  
“Think that means I should lay off pizza for a while?”  
  
“If falling on your head doesn’t kill you, cholesterol will,” Josh affirms.  
  
“Please don’t turn into a health nut,” Tyler laments. “Jenna is already enough.”  
  
Josh helps him get up, as he is still a bit unsteady. The box he found lies among the remnants of the broken ceiling, but Tyler knows better than to try and bend over to pick it up. Not when his head is pounding, and his ribs feel like he got hit by a freight train.  
  
“Can you get that for me?” he asks, pointing at it.  
  
Josh examines it, and to Tyler’s surprise, opens it. The fall must have broken its lock. It’s empty.  
  
“You think that’s important?” Josh asks, frowning.  
  
“Not sure,” Tyler says, wondering if whatever was inside is now out there somewhere with them.  
  
“We better tell Clancy we wrecked his ceiling,” he quickly adds, a bit miffed that the house owner hasn’t reacted to the sound of him crashing to the floor.  
  
“You did,” Josh points out.  
  
But Clancy has other things in mind; they find him standing in front of his living room window, looking at something out there in the street. He doesn’t react when they call out, just like he didn’t react when half the house broke down. They approach on either side – Tyler is slower because his leg does hurt a little, if he’s totally honest – and look through the dirty glass.  
  
There is a man standing outside, across the withered lawn, wearing red robes and a head veil. He looks old but they both know he’s deadly.  
  
“You can see him, right?” Tyler whispers, because he can’t trust his own mind right now.  
  
Josh nods wordlessly. If Nico’s here, the others aren’t far behind. Whatever they want with Clancy must be important if he shows up in person. Or maybe it’s them they’re after. Tricking death must be intriguing and probably a blasphemy in their book.  
  
“How confident are you about the bolts on your door?” Tyler asks Clancy, but his voice sounds phony to his own ears.  
  
They need to find whatever is torturing that poor man and get the hell out fast – and that’s if the bishops aren’t the ones responsible for Clancy’s nightmares in the first place. Maybe it’s just a sick game of mind torture they’re playing, and Tyler wishes he wasn’t included.  
  
“Where did you find that?” Clancy nearly shouts instead, making them both jump.  
  
He’s looking at the box in Josh’s hands like he’s afraid of it. Good thing he can’t see the lock is broken.  
  
“It was my sister’s,” Clancy explains, staring vacantly at the box. Josh nods and waits for whole thing to make sense. “It was our mom’s before her; it’s been passed on for generations.”  
  
Tyler is half listening, half thinking, trying to remember a cryptid that might fit the description. Something old and trapped, yet powerful enough to manifest through nightmares. Something that eats light and craves darkness. Then he realizes they stopped watching Nico, and of course when he turns back to the window, he’s gone.  
  
“Crap.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nico’s on the move,” Tyler says somberly.  
  
“What do we do? Run?”  
  
Josh is trying to keep it together, but seeing him crash through the ceiling just moments ago was apparently enough excitement for the day. He’s ready to snap. He’s panicking.  
  
“At least they don’t have torches this time,” Tyler offers with a sad smile.  
  
“Give me the box,” Clancy says, and Josh is happy to comply.  
  
“It’s gone,” Tyler says. “It escaped when I…”  
  
“They don’t know that,” Clancy cuts him.  
  
Right on cue, there’s pounding at the door, and that raspy voice ordering them to get out. They look at each other, and Clancy has a weird twinkling in his eye, and he cradles the empty box like it’s the most precious thing he owns right now. It’s so stupid it might work. He opens the door and temperature is suddenly dropping, despite the sun shining outside. Nico is there, flanked by the three of the Niners, and Tyler gulps, unconsciously raising a hand to his neck.  
  
“So you cheated death, interesting.”  
  
Dark eyes bore a hole through him, and Tyler stops breathing for a second, until Josh steps between them. He’s a convinced pacifist, but Nico probably doesn’t know that. It does the trick, because Tyler can breathe again, and Clancy interrupts by bringing up the black box.  
  
“Please, take it and leave,” he pleads.  
  
He sounds pathetic and desperate enough that Nico might believe him. He does look like the sort of man who would get rid of family heirlooms if it could help him.  
  
“How do you know this is what we seek?” Nico sounds genuinely surprised, even a bit annoyed.  
  
“You want to find and destroy creatures that you consider abhorrent,” Tyler interjects, still hidden behind Josh’s broad form.  
  
“Just like you want to rescue them,” Nico spits. So he has done his homework about them. “They’re not part of God’s creation, and so they must perish.”  
  
“Agree to disagree,” Tyler laughs, sounding like a bratty kid. “Take it and leave before we change our minds.”  
  
Nico snatches the box and turns around, robes swirling like he’s in a movie. Josh slams the door behind him and looks at Tyler with tired eyes. He doesn’t have to say anything, as Tyler can feel warm blood spurting from his nose.  
  
“Not again,” he whines, and tries his best to cup his nose.  
  
The walls seem to close in on him, and he feels his legs buckle. He slides against the door and puts his head between his knees.  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
Lights flicker and then go out one after the other until none remains. Tyler wishes he still had his lighter.  
  
“It’s still here,” he says, to no one in particular.  
  
He’s not sure what Josh and Clancy see or don’t see right now, but he knows the creature who was trapped in the box is about to make an entrance.  
  
“Do we need weapons?” Josh asks, looking around but not finding anything useful.  
  
“Do we even know what we’re up against?” Tyler says from the floor where he’s sitting.  
  
“I was hoping you could tell us,” Josh replies very unhelpfully.  
  
“What happened to ‘we’re a two man team’?” He grumbles.  
  
He doesn’t make any attempt to stand up, because he really doesn’t need to pass out and split his head open right now. That’s why he’s the first to see it. Clancy is looking through the window, checking if the bishops are truly gone, and Josh is looking at Tyler like he might break.  
  
“Guys, don’t freak out but there is a serpent on fire in the kitchen,” Tyler whispers.  
  
Do snakes even have ears? He’s not even sure it really is a snake. Josh turns around and looks at the kitchen floor, but when he doesn’t gasp and stop in his tracks, Tyler assumes he can’t see it. It looks like a small brown snake, the ones they tell you not to approach if you ever see one. And it’s on fire. Only, it doesn’t seem bothered by it.  
  
“What are you doing?” Josh exclaims when Tyler starts moving towards the kitchen, still crouching.  
  
“I’m going to talk to the fire snake,” he tells him, wincing at how silly it sounds. Yep, that’s his life.  
  
“Don’t… don’t grab it?” Josh suggests, and he follows from a safe distance.  
  
“Wasn’t planning on it.”  
  
Tyler doesn’t look over his shoulder to see if Clancy is going to help. The man has been through enough already. He probably didn’t even know his family had a djinn tucked away in a box in the attic. At least he hopes so, because that’s the sort of information that could have helped.  
  
And so he coaxes the thing out in the open, despite being the only one able to see it. Djinn are usually non violent, but can be malicious. Tyler guesses it tried to get stronger in order to leave the house, probably spooked by the bishops’ proximity. Eating electricity, consuming light.  
  
He gets an idea, and takes a button cell from his front pocket. That will have to do. He ends up putting it in a tin box, leaving Australian biscuits scattered everywhere on the kitchen isle.  
  
“It’s not warded,” he coos, holding out the box. “You can get out whenever you want. How does that sound?”  
  
“So you actually are animal control,” Clancy exclaims, from where he stands outside the kitchen.  
  
Josh lets out a small laugh, but Tyler knows he never takes his eyes off him, as he closes the lid on what must look like an empty box.  
  
“You’ve done that sort of thing before?” Clancy sounds surprised. He does more and more now that the bishops’ influence is dissipating.  
  
“You have no idea,” Josh says, and he sounds proud.  
  
Tyler stands up from where he was kneeling, holding the box with the genie in it. It looks innocuous now, but it’s still a good thing they won’t have to go through regular customs.  
  
“We’ll give this one a new home,” Tyler says, careful not to shake the box.  
  
He can feel the heat of the invisible snake through the metallic side of the box, and he wonders if it would let Josh see it, in time.  
  
“This is goodbye, I guess,” Clancy says awkwardly. “I don’t know how I can thank you…”  
  
“Don’t thank us until you see your attic, man,” Tyler scoffs.  
  
“Send the note to Mark,” Josh quickly adds, because it’s not the first time something like that happened. Where they go, a little destruction is bound to follow.  
  
“We’ll stay in touch, in case we get news about your sister,” Tyler adds.  
  
Confusedly, he wants to show that he does care about human beings too, sometimes. But he’s also thinking about the bishops, and if those DEMA freaks think they can manipulate them and steal their job, they’ll have to prove them wrong.

||-//

The ride to the abandoned field airport is thankfully short – Mark was right when he said that Clancy’s would be just a stop on the way. They try to sleep in the back of the van, but the heat is stifling, and the shade too rare. They changed back to T-shirts and shorts a while back – or no shirt in Josh’s case – but they’re still sweating bullets.  
  
So when the night falls, and a small plane finally approaches and lands gracefully, they are so grateful they could kiss whoever is piloting it. They gather what’s left of their equipment – not much – and walk up to the plane. Mark is waiting for them on the steps of the stairs.  
  
“Tell me you’re not the one flying that thing?” Tyler groans.  
  
“Happy to see you too,” Mark says. “You look like shit, Tyler.”  
  
Tyler flashes a smile and quips, “Don’t worry, man, I feel even worse.”  
  
“Oh I worry, I worry all the time,” Mark sighs, raising his hands before going back into the plane to talk to the pilot. He looks like he’s already regretting coming in person.  
  
“So what was it with this secondary assignment anyway?” Josh asks once they’re settling inside. He tries not to sound too accusatory, but Tyler knows he blames Mark for what went down at Clancy’s.  
  
“You needed a win after the alien escaped,” Mark says. “And it sounded like an easy case.”  
  
“You should have informed us there were possible ties with DEMA,” Josh says sternly.  
  
“Any trouble?” Mark asks coyly. He pretends he doesn’t already know everything, and he doesn’t apologize. Big Brother has nothing on him.  
  
“We’ve got tons of crappy footage just for you,” Tyler teases. “I’m sure you’ll have a field day reviewing all that.” He winks at Josh and starts buckling his seat-belt.  
  
They’re somewhere above the Pacific, on their way to a secondary base, in order to transfer to a regular plane – but Tyler has stopped listening to Mark’s plan at one point – when Tyler starts coughing. He coughs and coughs some more. He confusedly hears Josh asking if he’s okay, and he wants to tell him that he worries too much, but he can’t seem to catch his breath. It’s like his lungs suddenly don’t have enough room to expand.  
  
He looks down at his hand and his eyes widen when he sees the glistening patch of blood in his palm. Well, that’s new, he thinks. He doesn’t even hear them panic, as he lets exhaustion pull him under. It’s most probably stress, he thinks, and that damn heat.

||-//

“You had a broken rib!” Josh nearly shouts. “It perforated your stomach!”  
  
“I heard Jenna say it _nicked_ my stomach. It was a very mild bleed,” Tyler weakly protests.  
  
“You were bleeding internally that entire time!”  
  
“And externally as well,” Tyler pipes up.  
  
“What?” Mark starts.  
  
“Nosebleeds,” Josh tiredly explains. “Quite spectacular.”  
  
He hasn’t left Tyler’s side since he woke up in Trench’s med bay. Tyler knows he must look bad right now, in scrubs, lying in a bed with an IV line in the back of his hand. It’s not his fault gravity hates him.  
  
“The second fall must have broken what you fractured in the first one.”  
  
“What do you mean, first one?” Mark exclaims.  
  
Tyler and Josh exchange a look, because it seems they forgot to report how he fell from a tree when they were first looking for Ned.   
  
“I expect your very detailed reports on my desk by Monday,” Mark concludes with a frown, and leaves. Somehow they’re not entirely sure he’s joking.  
  
Trench is mostly an underground facility – being a clandestine operation and all that. Right now, they’re somewhere under the woods in Ohio. After a while, you get used to the absence of windows and the permanent whoosh of machinery recycling the air. It feels like home, though, and Tyler hopes it does too for the lost creatures they bring back.  
  
“Are they marking the alien FPE?” Tyler asks out of the blue.  
  
Josh makes a face. FPE means “Failed to Protect Entity” – that’s what goes on the files when the creatures escape or die – Tyler hopes Ned’s doing okay, somewhere.  
  
“I’m sure we’ll cross paths again,” Josh pats him on the leg.  
  
“Any news on Clancy? I don’t think he’s safe, staying in that house. Nico is bound to come back once he realizes he was tricked.”  
  
There is an awkward silence, and Tyler stops fidgeting with the tube taped to his hand to look at Josh.  
  
“We already checked on him,” Josh reluctantly says. “He’s gone. The house is abandoned.”  
  
“What?” Tyler exclaims. “How long was I out?”  
  
“According to city records,” Josh continues, “the house was his sister’s. She died two years ago. Clancy was never listed as the owner.”  
  
“So he was living there illegally?” Tyler suggests, trying to wrap his head around those news. Who would have thought the nice, crazy sounding man was lying after all…  
  
“I’m not even sure the man we talked to was Clancy,” Josh says, without looking at him.  
  
“Who else?” Tyler asks, curious.  
  
“I was thinking the genie itself, but Mark said it was insane.”  
  
Tyler nods, because it sounds insane as hell, but not much more than their usual theories.  
  
“Why not tell us the truth?” Josh wonders out loud. “We could have helped.”  
  
“‘Hello, I’m a thousand years old djinn trapped in a derelict house and the crazy fanatics who killed my owner are now trying to capture me?’ Yeah, I can see how that would have worked,” Tyler mocks.  
  
“And what about the fire snake?” Tyler points out after some more thinking. “Was he just manipulating me?”  
  
“Please stop calling it that.”  
  
“It’s accurate,” Tyler pouts. He tries to cross his arms but the IV won’t allow him. “Not my fault you lost it on the way.”  
  
“We were a tiny bit concerned when you started hacking up blood on the plane, excuse us.”  
  
There is some awkward tension for a while, before Josh climbs into the medical bed next to Tyler. He’s careful not to tangle the line hooking him to the blood bag above his head, or to accidentally poke his side, swaddled in white bandages under the thin scrubs. He just holds him and lets him put his head on his shoulder.  
  
“Please don’t bleed on me?” he jokes, and Tyler snorts at that.  
  
And maybe later, they’ll order some pizza and watch security try to pretend the place doesn’t exist, while reluctantly paying for the food. Maybe they’ll even time how long it takes for Mark to barge in here, demanding an explanation.

**Author's Note:**

> I need validation. I had too much fun writing this. But it might just be a sad dumpster fire. I don't know.  
[Made my own fanart because why not.](https://sarcasmcloud.tumblr.com/post/188612926177/keep-the-lights-on-theyre-used-to-catastrophic)


End file.
